I felt as if I was there, every step of the way’ - Mark Solms, author of The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness ‘An exhilarating account of the biophysics of life, stretching from the first stirrings of living matter to the psychology of consciousness.
‘Nobody explains the inner secrets of the living cell better than Nick Lane’ - Richard Fortey, author of Trilobite!. I read with rapt attention’ - Olivia Judson, evolutionary biologist and author Transformer shows how a molecular dance from the dawn of time still sculpts our lives today. ‘Hugely ambitious and tremendously exciting. with soaring prose but uncompromising on scientific detail, Transformer made me think about life on earth in a completely different way’ - Daniel M. ‘Amazing! Takes science writing to a new level. In Transformer, chemistry is quite literally brought to life’ - Jim Al-Khalili, author of The World According To Physics a powerfully persuasive case for life being about energy flow, flux and change. ‘Thrilling and highly persuasive … This hugely important book is set to become a landmark, transforming our understanding of how life works’ - Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence. Lane provides a luminous understanding of how scientists, including Lane himself, are rethinking energy and living organisms’ - Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies, The Gene: An Intimate History ‘In this compulsive readable book, Lane takes us on a riveting journey, ranging from the flow of energy to new ways of understanding cancer. Life is at root a chemical phenomenon: this is its deep logic. And it puts the subtle differences between individuals in the same grand story as the rise of the living world itself. It links the emergence of consciousness with the inevitability of death. It connects the first photosynthetic bacteria with our peculiar cells. To grasp the Krebs cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of biology. 
Nick Lane is in the vanguard of scientists now tracing its ramifications across the tree of life. This conflicted merry-go-round of energy and matter has long taunted true understanding. At its core is a cycle of reactions that transforms inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life, and the reverse – the iconic Krebs cycle that sits at the heart of metabolism. In Transformer, Nick Lane captures a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight. The answer could turn our picture of life on Earth upside down. What really animates cells and sets them apart from non-living matter? This question goes back to the flawed geniuses and heroic origins of modern biology. Yet in terms of information, there is no difference between a living cell and one that died a moment ago. What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end?įor decades, biology has been dominated by information – the power of genes.
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